During the debate in Parliament today, I spoke on the controversy of the RM5 billion EPF loan to Valuecap to double its funds to RM10 billion to buy undervalued stocks and asked for a full and proper accounting of Valuecap since its establishment about six years ago.
I said that the Second Finance Minister, Datuk Nor Mohd Yakcop, who was at the time the Economic Adviser to the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, had announced when Valuecap Sdn. Bhd., was set up in early 2003, that it would be operating with RM10 billion funds – and that the cash for the RM10 billion had already been provided to Valuecap by the three equal owners, Khazanah Nasional Bhd, Permodalan Nasional Bhd (PNB) and Kumpulan Wang Amanah Pencen (KWAP).
However, Valuecap actually had RM5 billion and not RM10 billion as stated publicly by Nor Mohd Yakcop.
I asked Nor Mohd, who is now Second Finance Minister and was in the House to shepherd through the Finance Ministry’s committee stage, to explain.
As Valuecap had never given any proper accounting of its performance in the past five to six years, I asked Nor Mohd to provide such information in his reply.
I also raised the opposition of the workers and in particular the Malaysian Trades Union Congress (MTUC) to the government directive to EPF to advance the RM5 billion loan from workers’ savings to Valuecap to prop up the stock market.
Nor Mohd will start replying first thing tomorrow morning.
On the way out of Parliament after today’s meeting, I bumped into him and spoke to him about the need for full and proper accounting of Valuecap to Malaysian taxpayers as this had never been done before.
The Minister agreed, remarking that the government’s problem is that it had not explained enough.
We can look forward to the first full and proper accounting of Valuecap’s performance in the past five to six years in Parliament tomorrow!